


The Burden of Proof

by uninvitedtrashcan



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Demon Sex, Desk Sex, M/M, Magic Cock, Other, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-28 04:21:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20057920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uninvitedtrashcan/pseuds/uninvitedtrashcan
Summary: Strand's arrogance is too tempting not to shatter._______Season 1 Strand gets fucked by a demon. Loudly.





	The Burden of Proof

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't listened to this podcast properly in over two years, and only half remember anything beyond episode five. Canon past season 2 is a mystery to me. But, when someone (who is clearly an agent of Satan) sends you a text hypothesising Strand having demons proven to him via getting fucked by one, the call demands to be answered.

As even someone who had only known the man five minutes could no doubt predict, Dr. Richard Strand is the type to stay late at the office. He’s doing better than his college days, no longer tied to a desk till sunrise. Nowadays, he has a strict sleeping habit, maintained with the same meticulous rigor as everything else he commits to. And, again mirroring all other aspects of his life, he makes no compromises for that which goes beyond the strictly necessary; four hours a night, always.

Thus, there is nothing unusual about his being sat at his desk in the Strand Institute at one in the morning. The steaming coffee mug beside him is… a deviation from the norm, but they are now onto the tenth ‘Black Tape’ and Alex is starting to become, for lack of a kinder term,  _ unhinged _ . Insomnia coupled with a clear susceptibility to apophenia has rendered her no longer merely curious, but fanatical. 

If Strand can wrap up just one of the unsolved cases, perhaps she will at least get one decent night's sleep. Not that he takes it as a personal duty to solve the sleep disturbances of all those who allow themselves to be so irrational, but she is leaving him twelve voice messages a night and clearing them all out every morning is a waste of his time. (That, and he might be, maybe, just a little bit  _ worried. _ )

So he downs his caffeine and ignores his body’s protests at the late hour. The hit of restless energy ten minutes later lifts his brain out of its twilight stupor, enough for him to stop staring at the same page he’s been tapping his pen to for the past half an hour. His office, lit solely by a desk lamp, blurs around the edges of his vision; he’s able to pay better attention to the papers and photographs, but there’s a thrumming in his muscles mirrored by his brain that can’t quite sit still, a kind of silent hum. He knows he will be unable to sleep for hours. 

The things he does for his publisher. 

Two AM: The excess energy has to go somewhere, and combined with his skipping dinner to work, it rapidly crackles into  _ annoyance _ . Annoyance that people really believe these things. Annoyance that Alex Reagan is so hung up on these tapes, as if his failure to disprove nonsense somehow validates wild and completely untenable claims. Something has gone wrong with people today, atheism's dominance turning them all desperate to believe anything, from fad diets to demonic geometry. If they would only take two seconds to  _ think _ , to employ basic logic, they would at least understand where the burden of proof lies. 

Frustration peaking, flamed by the fact that he’s reread the same witness testimony three times and processed none of it, Strand shoves aside the entire casefile with a short grunt. It scoots off of the edge of his desk, papers fluttering out across the floor. Because of course it does.  _ Clearly, it was because of demons. _

Snorting at his own bitter joke, Strand closes his eyes and rubs his temples. What the hell is he doing here at two thirty in the morning? Why the hell is he wasting time trying to explain to people - to one person - basic logic, knowing they won’t listen to reason? If any of this crap existed, wouldn’t humanity have definitive proof by now, in the age of pervasive surveillance and overpopulation? 

His internal monologue about how ghosts and demons just  _ don’t make sense _ is paused by an unexpected something pressing against his elbow. Removing his palms from his face, he blinks down to see what he’s nudged by accident. A casefile sticks into his elbow, hanging precariously over the edge of the desk. 

He must be more tired than he realised, because he doesn’t remember taking out a second tape’s paperwork. To jog his memory, he thumbs the cover and peers in to identify which one he’s going to waste his night staring at now. 

He stills. It’s the same casefile he could have sworn he just sent flying. In spite of himself, a prickle runs over his neck, the backs of his hands. Even the great Dr. Strand can get spooked when jacked up on enough caffeine; thank heavens Alex isn’t there to witness it. She’d never let him rest if he fell victim to the oft-cited  _ apophenia _ . 

Chuckling at his own exhaustion, at the sheer ridiculousness of what a tired mind saturated with coffee and demonic geometry can come up with, he closes the file, sighs, and pushes back on his chair to get up. 

Only, as he makes to stand, two hands press down against his shoulder. 

“Rather rude of you to leave, when I’ve come all this way just for you.” 

Strand does not outwardly panic. Inside, his already erratic heart rate is skyrocketing, but he’s the type that performs spectacularly under pressure, only to internalise and bury everything when the danger has passed. Since the danger is very much present, his only reaction is to straighten, mouth forming a thin, harsh line. 

He assesses what he knows already: the intruder is competent, having passed to the back of the room without his notice; they have no qualms about being identified, in clear view of the security camera; they are confident, and likely skilled in hand-to-hand combat given the direct confrontation and the absence of a gun threat. Strand flexes, attempting to turn and failing– their grip is disconcertingly strong.

“Trying to sneak a peek? No, let’s not rush this. You’re the investigator. Let’s see you try to work this one out; you’re cute when you’re thinking.” 

Dr. Richard Strand has never been called ‘cute’ in his life, not even by his ex-wife. Coupled with the intruder’s condescending tone, it has the effect of strengthening his resolve: the gun is in the draw just a few inches to his right. This person, whoever they are, is clearly arrogant, cocky. Strand can use that.

Inhaling, he plays into the intruder’s game to distract from his straying hand. “Very well. Your tone suggests you think you’re a lot more intimately acquainted with me than someone merely hired to do another’s job would be. Your accent is distinct, and I don’t recognise it. You could be affecting it, but you don’t care about being identified in the long-run, and your approach indicates you’re showing off; you want me to know  _ you _ . So, you’re not someone I’m close to, which means you’re someone who’s formed an emotional attachment to me without ever having spent a great deal of time with me. My biography isn’t being published until next year, so, in all likelihood, you’re a fan of Alex’s show. Are you the one who keeps emailing in marriage proposals?”

Something about the intruder’s tone and  _ touch _ has been faintly sexual. Strand has had stalkers before. Perhaps it’s arrogance or exhaustion, but he’s barely even surprised that this is happening. If anything, he’s almost impressed; a run of the mill fanatic would never have made it past the Institute’s security; but, then again, with Alex getting so many cryptic phone hacks and messages, the show clearly attracts a certain type, and a talented one at that. 

This has probably been a long time coming. 

In response to his answer, the intruder laughs, a cold, musical sound that knocks the resigned confidence right out of Strand’s chest. It is a stereotype best left to B-list horror movies, but the intruder’s voice really is  _ chilling _ . In fact, not only is he shivering, which he blamed on adrenaline, but his breath is rising before him in a visible plume of condensation. 

What stalker cuts the heating, and  _ why _ ? 

“A fan of the show? I suppose you could say that. I’m certainly a fan of your work, Dr. Strand. And little Miss Reagan, too, but she’s not as much fun– too easy, you know? Sure, some love the believers, the quick fix, and so on, but I’ve always been a sucker for the devout skeptics. Harder to break, but when they do, oh, it just ruins  _ everything _ . Their whole world view,  _ poof _ .” 

Before Strand can even begin to reply, he finds himself hauled up from his chair (roughly), spun around, and shoved back against his own desk. It’s sturdy, worked from heavy mahogany, the kind that dominates a room, but even it shudders under the force that knocks him against it. This has him disorientated, winded, and, for a moment, not quite registering what is before his eyes. 

No– that is inaccurate. Even when he has his sense of balance back, Strand has no idea what he is looking at. The figure of the intruder is right there, up against him. He can feel them pressed to his hips, legs, a hand gripping him by the neck, and yet he can’t quite– his mind won’t settle on any concrete idea of them. They look to be a shadow, only solid. Yet their outline is at once both shifting and solid. He sees them in flashes of images, at one moment enormously tall and broad, with the head of what appears to be a bull, the next they are selvete and growing great long, elegant horns from all across their body. Another, they’re little more than a blur, a pitch black shimmer.

What makes it especially difficult to identify them is that he cannot look at them directly. He tries, of course he tries, but he finds himself unable to face them head on; instead, he is compelled to avert his eyes in a manner that, given the weight pressing on his crotch, feels bizarrely sexual, submissive, even if it’s entirely against his will. 

The coffee. It must have been drugged.  _ That’s _ how they got past him unnoticed. Someone on the inside then? Perhaps a new employee, someone with access to the kitchenette he uses for late nights and long work hours. 

“What do you want from me?” He asks, his breathing laboured. That faint hum he’d blamed on caffeine is stronger now, ringing in his skull, but he retains the presence of mind to slowly inch his left hand down the length of the desk. He touches the handle of the draw with a forefinger. 

“What do I–? Really Richard, you witness a demon firsthand, one who has come  _ incarnate  _ to personally torment you, and that’s all you can think to say? Your lack of imagination would be disappointing if it wasn’t what made you so delightfully stubborn.”

“What is it?” Strand says through clenched teeth. What a sick joke to play. “What did you spike me with? I’m not an idiot. So let’s be reasonable. Just tell me what it is that you _ want _ .” 

The intruder laughs at his questions, that same icy noise that is at once reminiscent of both a chorus of flutes and the shattering of glass. Then their pitch changes, voice so low it rumbles the very desk beneath Strand’s fingertips. “Oh dear Doctor, I don’t think you’re going to like the answer to that one. Isn’t it obvious? I want  _ you _ .” 

That final word sinks all the way through Strand, in a way that he has no control over; his limbs go limp, his skin flushes, and, to his greatest horror, his cock hardens. What the hell kind of drug is this? Struggling to maintain control over his cerebral and verbal functions, he stammers out, “Want me– Want me to  _ what _ ?” 

“You, my dear doctor, don’t need to do anything. You’ve already done all the hard work. Chasing me all about the world, pouring over me late into the night, thinking about me as you go to bed. You can consider me thoroughly seduced already, Richard. All you need to do now is lie back and relax as I shatter every belief you’ve ever clung to. And won’t it be nice, to finally accept what happened to your ‘missing’ wife? You could say that I’m here to give you closure.”

It is a relief when Strand is flipped over by those hands, no longer forced to not-look at the intruder’s image. Despite the situation, part of him relaxes; he can breathe at last, not having realised it was being steadily squeezed from him. 

It is a mistake to be relieved. 

His shirt and waistcoat are ignored; it is his belt and trousers that are torn asunder and discarded he knows not where. His boxers are treated more delicately, a finger (fingers? Somehow it does not feel like either of those but  _ something _ is touching him) toying with the waistband. “So you  _ can _ surprise me, Doctor. I always had you figured for a briefs man. These are practically  _ sexy _ . Perhaps the suits aren’t just what’s expected of you. Don’t pretend you don’t know how good you look in them, I’ve seen you in front of the mirror.” 

Something both hot and cold, like an exhaled breath and a draught, brushes Strand’s cheek. “I bet you get off on those listener marriage proposals. You do so love commanding a room. I’ve seen you, explaining me, discounting me,  _ figuring me out _ . Or trying to, anyway. It’s endearing, how fiercely you fight to remain in control.” 

Try as he might, Strand can’t quite shut the intruder’s words out, even among the building buzzing noise wracking his skull. He is a mess, in all the worst ways: drenched with sweat from head to toe, hard as a rock, and unable to get two words out, tongue heavy and stupid in his mouth. He can’t even do silence properly; the slow, sickeningly  _ loving _ removal of his boxers draws from him a whimper. He realises then that he is crying. 

The gun. He just has to get the gun. Once they’re dead or incapacitated, he can get this shitty, monstrous drug, whatever it may be, out of his system, and pull out of the podcast, vanish. No, he can use  _ this _ to show how dangerous false belief is. He can go public. He can– he can– 

Try as he might, he can’t shut out the sensation of fingers trailing up his thighs, caressing his arse. The bastard is savouring this. “I’ve waited a long time for this. Patience sweetens the inevitable, I think. And watching you chase your own tail has been such a thrill, all in my name. Well, not that you’ve worked  _ that _ out yet. You’ll get there, keep at it. I want you to keep chasing me, when this is done. I won’t kill you,  _ yet _ .” 

Those fingers (can fingers feel this  _ cold? _ ) squeeze at the sensitive spot of his inner thigh, hot-cold air tickling his ear once again. “But such arrogance is really begging to be taught a lesson, Doctor. And I’ve wanted to do this for so long.”

Strand’s question as to what they mean is strangled down to silence by the pain of the intruder forcing something into him. From just  _ where _ it’s shoved and its slick coating, he’d assume it’s was intruder’s dick but  _ fucking hell _ , no human anatomy is that big. Strand isn’t as austere in the bedroom as the rest of his life, so he knows what it feels like to be penetrated by a range of shapes and sizes, but nothing like this. Nothing this sharp.

No late nights of stress fucking wth strangers could have prepared him for this. It is like being ripped open. He thinks he may actually be being torn open, feeling the hot, wet drip of what he thinks is blood soaking his thigh. He’s lost all feeling in his legs from the hips down, lost all control of his torso, which is bent double over the hardwood. There isn’t– there isn’t  _ anything _ but that stabbing pain shoved deep inside of him. 

And then it starts  _ moving _ . 

The rocking motion is slow for a few, barely tolerable seconds. It’s a kind of gentleness that serves only to make what follows all the more harrowing. The intruder and whatever is shoved inside of him start  _ fucking  _ him, at a pace claimed as realistic only in bad pornos. And fuck, it hurts. It– he can’t–

He doesn’t see how he can endure it, how he can be alive in so much pain. Whatever it is, it feels long enough to be piercing through him, up to his stomach, heart,  _ lungs _ . It is hard as stone and colder than ice, making is own body feel all the softer, vulnerable, hot. Gaze thrown down as fingers grip his hair and shove him over, he catches sight of his abdomen;  _ something _ impossibly enormous is pushing against his stomach, visibly extending it back and forth with each thrust. He is certain he is going to vomit, to faint, to escape this the only way he can.

Yet he stays conscious, driven right onto the edge, every fibre of his body convinced it is being ripped apart. It’s not just his crotch, his hips, it’s everything. Arms, back, legs, neck, eyes, forehead, all of it splitting at the seams. And through it all, he is somehow forced into awareness of the fact that his face is plastered to his own desk, that his body is pinned down like a rag doll, that he is being fucked in his own office and unable to do anything about it. The smell of polished mahogany fills his senses. He is dissociating and yet feels every second of it. 

The face (some surface, some surface with a tongue that can lick up his spine) of the intruder presses against his shoulder, teeth pinching the flesh of his collarbone. It should hardly register in comparison with the agony of his bursting insides, and yet Strand feels it like an electric shock, tensing his lungs and ribcage and– and feeling it most of all in his crotch. Suddenly, the worst pain is  _ there _ , an aching so intense he finds himself sobbing. 

“Make it stop.” They’re the first words he’s been able to say since this started, and any sense of satisfaction at the victory is overridden by his own revulsion at how pathetic he sounds. 

“You want me to make you come?” The intruder asks. Their sneering voice shivers through Strand’s body all over again, right to the core. 

“ _ I want it to  _ stop _ .” _

“There’s only one way this ends, Doctor. And you’re going to beg for it. I’ve imagined this too often to let you off easy.”

In his current state, it takes Strand a few moments to even understand what is meant. The nausea in his stomach increases tenfold. “Go to hell,” he half hisses, half gasps, choked off by the hand about his throat tightening. 

“But it would be rude to go back before finishing you off, Doctor. Now,” the hand (which feels more like a rope one minute, like something strange and damp and  _ slimy _ another) constricts to the point where Strand’s vision blurs to near-blackness, high on oxygen deprivation, “ask nicely.”

He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to say anything without air, but when he does manage to snatch a breath, it’s only expletives and curses he wants to say. They knot in his throat, capped, and he’s forced to swallow them all. Each one sinks, down through his chest, ribs, thighs, right to his erection until it hurts so much he forgets his pride and dignity and can think only of release. 

“ _ Please _ .”

“Please what?” 

The hand loosens, and though oxygen floods his system he still can’t see for the tears stinging his eyes. “Please let me come.”  _ Just let it be over _ . 

No sooner has he said the words does the dizzying aching and tearing sensation soar, cresting at a pitch that has him blind and crying out so loudly it’s all he hears in his ears, even over that infernal buzzing in his skull. When it dips, every sensory nerve focuses on how sticky he is, how stained, the wetness of his thighs and abdomen matching his tear-streaked face. The physical pain in his body has vanished. All he feels now is  _ dirty _ . 

He thinks he is going to be sick. Behind him, the intruder chuckles, the sound thrumming like the crackling of autumn leaves. “If only you could see yourself now, Richard. You’re  _ quite _ the picture.” Strand can hardly hear him, his mind far, far away. Something is breaking, fresh, over and over, but even now Strand has one method of coping: burial. He is able to swallow the sobs now, school the tears into vanishing. His trembling body is, slowly, with the same discipline he applies to everything, stilled. 

Whatever the drug in his system is, it’s fading. 

Two fingers skim up his blood-and-cum coated thighs, rising to stroke his cock, plying at it like a plaything. “I’m shocked. I thought someone as stubborn as you would have held out much longer. Perhaps you’re less high and mighty than you let yourself seem. How embarrassing; I hope this isn’t your sort of  _ thing _ . I wanted to ruin you, not cater to your fantasies.” On and on the voice goes, but Strand hears none of it. He tunes it out, letting in the buzzing sound now. It gives him a kind of focus, a focus that he needs to move his hand. 

“You’re louder than I imagined. I knew you’d cry, but not like that. I’m disappointed, Strand. I think you gave too much too easily.” He covers his movements with a shudder, feigning weakness in his legs. Half an inch more. “But don’t worry, I’m not done with you yet. Keep chasing, and we’ll play another game, don’t you worry. I haven’t had you call me by my true name yet. Won’t  _ that _ be something?”

He has the gun from the drawer turned on the intruder in the space of five seconds, his body no longer held by those monstrous hands. He’s ready for the inability to look this time; he turns and aims with his eyes averted, finding his mark by looking only out of the corner of his eye. Three bullets plug into the figure of the intruder in rapid fire. 

Glass shatters. The laugh rings out again,  _ delighted _ . “How cute! You still think bullets would stop me. Your poor painting; it’s an original, isn’t it? Oh well. Something to remember me by, Doctor.” The blur of the figure draws closer, and something that could be lips or lace or the dead of winter kisses his cheek. “Do you believe yet?” 

And just like that, the figure vanishes.   
  
  


  
  



End file.
